Cold
by Taynna
Summary: One character reflects on their actions. Post Wrecked I guess. No explicit content, relationships are implied. Reformatted and Reedited.


Cold

By: Taynna

Disclaimer: Gimme a break. If I owned them, Angel and Buffy would have kids and Cordelia, Spike, and Willow would still be compelling characters.

* * *

He isn't cold. 

No matter how many times I seek, and find, release in his embrace, that always surprises me.

He isn't cold.

It bothers me. I go to him to lose myself, to hide from the fingers of reality that threaten to tear away the last threads of my sanity along with all that remains of my self. Each time, after I pour my pain and fear into him, it pulls me back into the reality that I spent myself trying to escape.

He isn't cold.

His breath doesn't quicken at my touch, because he doesn't breathe.

His pulse doesn't race to match the primal rhythms of my own. His heart is dead and doesn't beat.

I accept those facts with an ease that should frighten me, but doesn't, can't. I have no fear left.

With every brush of his hands and every touch of his body against mine, I am reminded. Surprised. Shocked.

He isn't cold.

He believes that he loves me. He knows that I am incapable of loving him. Does he love me? Probably not. He needs to love me, and I need to forget. It is the ultimate dysfunctional relationship.

He is forever a child. That's what vampires are. In six years, give or take 4 months, I have learned a lot about the creatures I kill. They never grow up. They have no consequences to face, nothing to draw them from their play; their emotions are as pure as they are fleeting. I am the last contact he has with a world that has forsaken him. A vampire with no bite can't survive in the dark and the light has cast them out for eternity. I am shadow, walking the edges of two worlds, forever meant to live on the fringe. Through me he can touch both worlds. He clings to me like a security blanket, uses me to assure his identity. A lost child. Forever.

I need him. That should scare me. It doesn't.

I am not a child. My innocence was lost so long ago that I can't remember what innocence is. It is strange, that I kill them because they are evil, and they are, but I envy them because that evil is so pure that it is innocent as well. They have what I can never reclaim.

He isn't cold.

He isn't warm. But he isn't cold. He believes he loves me. I need him to make me feel like I can still feel.

Does it bother me because I know that his heat is stolen? Stolen from the blood of another's life, stolen from my body while we lose ourselves in each other?

Or does it bother me because I need him to be a demon?

* * *

Author's Note: 

I wrote this during one of my incredibly boring calculus lectures sometime in January 2002 and could never bring myself to post it or even edit it. I've never written anything like it before. For the past 4 ½ months it has sat aimlessly on my hard drive though, and it is driving me nuts, so I'm posted it, for better or worse.

FYI: I am NOT a Buffy/Spike fan, I think this fic portrays that, but just in case anyone is confused, I'm really not. The relationship this season has annoyed and even angered me and this was my way of trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

February 4, 2004 Updated Author's Note:

Following yet another hard drive catastrophe, I downloaded this for my private files and discovered some weird formatting errors had popped up. I decided to fix them, along with a few typos that I missed somehow in the past, and upload an error free version, mostly for the heck of it.

Looking back on this piece, I find myself quite pleased with how it turned out. Must have been that calculus class, because it's one of the few pieces I've ever been satisfied with.

The sixth season relationship between Buffy and Spike never sat very well with me, still doesn't really. Aside from being a closet happy ending maniac and my inability to give up on the Buffy/Angel relationship, these two characters just never seemed right together for me. Especially during season six. Buffy was SO messed up and Spike was so willing to take abuse (which is just NOT healthy behavior) that I don't think I could ever view the pairing as anything but really dysfunctional. Which isn't to say that I can't understand why people like the pairing or to say that people are wrong to like it; I just can't ever be one of those people. In any event, this is all about me trying to rationalize Buffy's behavior in my own head. Enjoy.


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